The last year has no doubt been a test for everyone. I've had majority of this written for a long time and have finally completed it to a satisfying state. Forgive me for my lateness. 

Jongin wasn’t sure if he would take up Krystal’s offer.

He hadn’t seriously considered any of the previous flirtatious advances or date inquiries before. Some were merely interested in Jongin’s visual appeal, while others were interested in dating a vampire. Krystal seemed to be coming from a more genuine, deeper place. She had actively tried to learn more about him – though, was watching him through the door window while he danced unknowingly creepy? Maybe?

Krystal seemed to grow a little defeated the longer he took to answer. He had a lot to consider though, since this wasn’t some fairy who wanted to casually date while at college. Krystal was a part of the vampire community. What would that mean for them in the long run? Jongin was royalty, who was expected to follow the strict traditions of pure-bloods. Krystal didn’t fit into those traditions.

“Do you need to think-“, Krystal started, but cut off when the door to the dance studio opened.

Jongin’s eyes snapped to the intruder. Apparently his hiding place wasn’t that great of a hiding place.

His roommate stared back at him, a small bag in his grip. “There you are.” His brown eyes shifted over to the female in the room. “I hope I wasn’t interrupting something.”

“You were,” Krystal replied, sounding a little peeved. She hardly even glanced at Sehun before turning her attention back to the vampire prince. “Would you like some time to think on it?”

Jongin got to his feet, feeling weird being the only one on the ground. He brushed invisible dirt off of his pants, his mind still considering Krystal’s question, but finding it difficult with the feeling of another set of eyes on him.

Sehun was always interrupting. Even when having a conversation with a complete stranger the djinn was coming to his mind. His roommate was a pest even in Jongin’s own head.

The djinn looked like he was trying to piece together the conversation, his eyes shifting between the two.

Jongin had a sort of epiphany upon thinking of his roommate. He could hardly handle the people he already had in his life. Did he want to add a girlfriend to the mix? Not really. He wanted to just lay low with no drama or problems and get through the school year. Dating someone meant promises and date planning and expressing emotions.

The pure-blood picked up the bottle of blood that was still sitting next to his feet and held it out to Krystal. “I’m very flattered, but I must decline. I’m not looking to date anyone right now.”

Krystal accepted the bottle after a moment, her chin tilting up with forced confidence. “Right, you’re a prince. It wouldn’t have worked out anyway, I guess.” She sniffed and curtly nodded before turning on her heel and brushing past Sehun.

Then it was only the djinn and vampire prince in the studio room.

“Why’d you reject her? She was cute,” Sehun piped up after a moment, approaching his roommate.

Jongin considered whether he should even bother giving him an answer, but figured the djinn would annoy him either way. “I don’t want to date.”

Sehun let out a short laugh. “You don’t have to date. There’s such a thing as friends with benefits, you know. At least get laid.”

The vampire made a face at his roommate.

“That face makes me think you’ve never actually had before.”

The comment was followed by an amused grin which really ticked Jongin off. The vampire’s emotions were easily evoked by that grin. “ off,” he snapped. If his body could actually flush, his cheeks would be betraying him just then.

Sehun slinked closer, setting the bag he had still clutched in his hand down on the floor. “You’re really missing out, Kai,” Sehun taunted, his voice sickly sweet.

Jongin took an instinctual step behind him, his back hitting the wall. “I don’t believe I am.”

“Have you even kissed someone before?” The djinn asked, very quickly closing the space between them since the vampire had unintentionally trapped himself. “I’m willing to be your test dummy.”

“Would you quit with all the joking around?” Jongin had had enough. He pushed Sehun, getting some of his much needed personal space back when the djinn stumbled back a couple steps.

“Joking? What are you talking about?” Sehun’s eyebrows furrowed, clearly visible with his hair still pinned back in that stupid clip. This was perhaps one of the most genuine emotions Jongin had seen him display in weeks. He looked honestly confused.

“All these jokes about kissing!” Jongin’s voice came out more exasperated than angry. “I’m not your little play thing.”

“The ? ‘Play thing’? I’m not playing around with you, Kai.” Now Sehun’s voice was angry. “Sure, I might have come off as teasing and , but every teasing thing I’ve ever said to you was honest.”

Crimson eyes searched the djinn’s face, as if trying to find the lie in it.

Sehun continued, “I’m not choosy with who I’m attracted to and I’m certainly attracted to you. I wasn’t about to jump my new roommate though. But then you brought up kissing when trying to control my mind-“

“It’s called compulsion,” Jongin interrupted, his voice uncharacteristically soft.

“Whatever the it’s called!” Sehun huffed, throwing up his hands. “The point is, you brought it up, so I thought maybe you were trying to gauge the atmosphere like I was, but then you clamed up, out of nerves or pride or whatever it was. So I’ve been throwing you hints, very obvious hints, which you sometimes play along with, or completely ignore, or flat out shoot down.” The djinn looked frustrated. “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.”

The vampire was trying to come to terms with what his roommate was telling him. Sehun had just admitted his attraction to Jongin. Such a thing wasn’t new for Jongin. All his life, he had been complimented on his good genes and since starting at this school, he had been approached by a wide array of creatures who all seemed to find him nice to look at.

Did he find the djinn nice to look at? Sehun was objectively attractive, Jongin could admit. He had a nice body that he showed off every moment he could. The piercings were interesting. Jongin had wondered what had brought Sehun to get them. The djinn also treated him like just another person. It was like the fact that his roommate was royalty had slipped Sehun’s mind.

Jongin was brought out of his own chaotic mind by a sharp flick to his forehead. He was startled by the distance Sehun had closed between them.

“I’m not proposing to you, so stop thinking so hard,” the djinn said, rolling his eyes to accentuate his point. “I just think it’d be nice to like make out and . If you aren’t interested, then just say so and I’ll back off.”

The brown eyes on him were intense, pinning Jongin to that wall with their gaze alone. The vampire wasn’t really sure how to respond. How was he supposed to know if he was interested in something if he hadn’t tried it before? He voiced such a concern to his roommate which he was sure would cause the other to laugh at him, but Sehun just smirked.

“I told you, I’m very willing to be your test dummy.”

Jongin didn’t even get a moment to respond before Sehun was closing whatever space they still had between them. The djinn’s forearms, from wrist to elbow, thunked lightly against the mirror on either side of Jongin’s head. His body pressed close, as close as it had been when Jongin fell on him, but this time Sehun’s lips were against his as well.

It was strange at first, just a weird mashing of one mouth against another, but Sehun turned his head to the side a little and Jongin began to mimic his small movements. But just as the vampire was getting used to the motions, Sehun surprised him by nipping at his bottom lip and seemingly unlocking some kind of instinct inside of Jongin.

Sehun tasted like his blood smelled, rich with a touch of something sweet. Then Jongin could feel that tiny little metal ball against the seam of his lips and without really thinking about it, he allowed Sehun to guide the kiss into something deeper. The vampire raised his arms from where they were uselessly hanging at his sides to rest his hands on Sehun’s hips. He needed something to hold onto while Sehun’s scent overwhelmed his senses.

A low moan sounded in the back of Sehun’s throat as their lips parted slightly, Sehun’s tongue still tracing the roof of Jongin’s mouth. When his tongue started running along the blunt tips of Jongin’s incisors, Jongin was going to pull away to get him to stop, but Sehun beat him to it, flinching back with a wrinkle to his nose.

“So, heh ah harh,” he breathed with his tongue half sticking out of his mouth.

Jongin had his attention on the touch of brilliant red at the tip of Sehun’s tongue, his fangs aching with the desire to taste. The smell was even more prominent, slapping Jongin right in the face and bringing traces of red to the edge of his sight. The djinn closed his mouth, effectively ending the trance his blood had pulled Jongin into.

“Did you want a taste?” Sehun asked, as if he was asking if Jongin wanted a bite of his sandwich.

The vampire’s crimson eyes flickered over to the bag Sehun had put on the ground earlier, his nose picking up on another delicious smell. “You brought me blood.”

“Huh?” the djinn looked confused, following Jongin’s line of sight to the bag slightly behind them. “Oh, yeah, cause your bottle broke.” Sehun’s eyes returned to Jongin’s face. “You can smell that from here?”

Jongin wiggled his way out from between Sehun’s body and the wall, retrieving the bottle from the bag. He was a lot hungrier than he had realized. There was an extra pair of clothes in the bag too, specifically Jongin’s clothes. He looked back at Sehun, unscrewing the cap to the bottle as he did so. “Did you go back to the dorms?”

The djinn shrugged. “It was close enough to the cafeteria.”

“Thank you,” Jongin said, a soft smile ghosting across his face just as he put the edge of the bottle to his lips and took a long sip.

“Here’s a question,” Sehun started, “vampires are technically considered dead, right? But purebloods are born, so obviously vamps can get hard-ons.” The gulp Jongin took in that moment went down the wrong way and then promptly came back up once Sehun got to his question. “Have you ever actually jerked off?”

The vampire was practically choking, his hand which had clamped over his mouth in the nick of time was stained with saliva and blood.

“Sorry, was that scandalous to ask a Prince?” There was laughter in Sehun’s voice.

Jongin got his bearings, coughing a little as he gave Sehun a look of annoyance.

The djinn crouched down to rummage through the bag he had brought for Jongin, a smile still on his face. He retrieved a towel and took it upon himself to wipe the red off of Jongin’s hand. “It’s a scene I can’t picture in my head, and trust me, I’ve tried.”

The vampire’s gaze had followed Sehun’s hands to where they maneuvered the soft towel between Jongin’s fingers and over his palm. “I’m not a prude.”

Sehun chuckled. “I’m glad to hear it.” He lifted the towel up to Jongin’s mouth, gently wiping a smear of blood from his bottom lip. “Now, if you ever need some assistance with that kind of thing, I’m also very much willing to be your test dummy for that too.” The djinn’s voice was extremely suggestive, along with the light drag of his fingertips from Jongin’s wrist to his elbow. “I’ve been told my fingers are god-like.”

Jongin was stuck trying to come up with some sort of smart or even y retort, but luckily he didn’t have to for his roommate pulled away, dropping the towel onto the bag he had brought for Jongin. The vampire was almost disappointed, but would never in his life ever admit such a thing out loud.

“Since we came here to practice, we probably should right? Or would you rather continue making out cause I wouldn’t mind that either.”

Sehun didn’t get a response. Instead Jongin took another swing from the bottle of blood before moving it and the bag aside so that the floor was clear for them. When he straightened, his eyes caught sight of what his roommate was doing behind him in the floor to ceiling mirrors lining one side of the room.

Turning around, the vampire gaped at the djinn for a minute.

Sehun was facing him, bent forward with his hands bracing himself on the floor. His legs were spread wide on either side of him, stretched straight in a triangle shape. Jongin’s eyes very quickly drifted to the expanse of skin being exposed by Sehun’s too loose shirt interacting with gravity and the sparkle of gold on both of his s.

The djinn changed poses, suddenly bending backward while his legs remained as they were against the floor. His upper body curled up under his lower body, preforming an amazing feat of flexibility when brown eyes met crimson from underneath an extremely firm .

“What are you doing?”

“Stretching.” Cue a smug smirk. The djinn knew Jongin had been looking.

“That cannot be considered stretching. Stop that.” Jongin struggled to make his voice sound unaffected. “Don’t look at me like that when your head is between your legs.”

“So when did this prank war officially start?”

Chanyeol was currently using the washing facilities in the basement of his dorm, scrubbing away at strange dark splotches staining the fabric of his hoodie. Kris was stationed right next to him, using the other basin to try to remove purple goo sticking to his button up. Chanyeol didn’t think the dragon would ever successfully rid the white fabric of the weird colour.

They had been ambushed.

Just as they were leaving the North dorms for the cafeteria, the opening of the main doors triggered the two buckets of sludge precariously hanging above the doorframe. It was a classic prank. Chanyeol just barely caught the sight of two students scurrying away from their hiding spot just outside the doors.

Unfortunately for Chanyeol and Kris, the bathrooms on their floor were being temporarily taken over by the greater half of the female population of their wing of the dorms. According to the witch that barred them from entering, all of the other bathrooms had various types of frogs crawling out of the drains.

Therefore, the phoenix and dragon had to bring their hygiene supplies down to the laundry room and try to clean up somehow there. Whatever had been dumped on them had begun to dry into a weird paste in their hair and gave off a pungent smell.

“It usually starts the second week of the new school year and doesn’t end until the spring dance,” Kris explained, answering Chanyeol’s previous question while vigorously scrubbing at his shirt.

The phoenix hadn’t been living under a rock per say – he had heard the talk of ants being found in one of the common rooms, walking in very specific lines over every available surface. Or the weird flare of static electric shocks that were suddenly plaguing students in the South dorms to the point where no one was willing to touch anything or anyone. He figured someone was pranking someone, but he hadn’t realized that this was a sort of tradition for the school.

Students from both dorms were getting each other back for past pranks too, dialing things up every year.

“Have you ever pranked back?” Chanyeol asked, dunking his shirt back into the sudsy water in the wash basin.

Kris shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve been an untargeted victim mostly so I don’t see any reason to prank back. The rest of the dorm is doing that for me.”

Chanyeol laughed. “That sounds like pure laziness.”

The dragon flashed a small grin. “I call it smarts.”

The angle Chanyeol was leaned over his wash basin mixed with the way Kris was hunched over his stained shirt provided the perfect line of sight for Chanyeol to notice something he had never noticed since meeting the dragon.

“You have horns!” He said it like he had just discovered the answer to a difficult test question. It was surprise mixed with bright triumph.

Kris’ entire form froze, his golden reptilian eyes comically large.

Chanyeol could just barely see one small brown stub between the clumped pieces of Kris’ blond hair. Kris’ usual hairstyle hardly moved from its careful curtain over his forehead and the dragon always wore caps to basketball practice. He was intentionally hiding them.

The dragon seemed to get a hold of himself and quickly pulled his fingers through his slimy hair to try to get it back into its usual shape. Chanyeol reached out to catch his wrist and Kris went completely still again.

“Why do you hide them?”

Golden eyes shifted to the side, as if unable to meet Chanyeol’s. “They should be bigger by now.” Kris’ voice was uncharacteristically soft, vulnerable and Chanyeol immediately released Kris’ wrist.

“So? Horns are horns, they’re cool either way.”

Kris’ eyes moved back to Chanyeol, surprise shining in the slit pupil.

“You should show them off more often,” Chanyeol added with an easy smile.

The smile he received was the only response he needed. Hopefully his words, though simple, were enough to grant Kris at least a little bit of confidence when it came to his horns.

“They are down here!” a sudden voice called, breaking the tender moment Chanyeol seemed to be sharing with his roommate. The phoenix looked over at the door to the laundry room, surprised to see Jongdae there. Three other people filed into the room after him – Baekhyun, followed by Sehun and then Kai. Kai looked extremely uncomfortable, pointedly keeping distance between himself and the rest of them.

“What happened to you?” Kris asked, wrinkling his nose.

“Stink bombs,” Jongdae replied, unamused. His usually warm eyes were uncharacteristically serious. Baekhyun was had the same purple-ish powder sprinkled over his clothes and face as Jongdae did.

“I’m covered in my own gross slime, and still your stench is overpowering it from here,” Kris commented, gagging lightly.

“Looks like you two got hit too. Help us with revenge.”

Chanyeol glanced at Sehun and Kai. “Did you guys get pranked too? What’s those bruises on your neck from Sehun?”

The djinn had marks – already in various states of healing – littering his neck and disappearing under the collar of his t-shirt. Kai visibly stiffened a few paces behind him. “Oh, these aren’t from any prank. I’m just here to participate in the revenge Dae and Baek are concocting.”

Jongdae grinned gleefully. “I want to return the favour to our classmates in the South dorm, specifically Suho and Min.”

“Were they behind the bombs?” Kris asked, his back to them as he had gone back to attempting to clean his shirt.

“Well, I didn’t see who it was exactly, but I’m sure Min had his hand in it! He knows how sensitive my nose is!”

“Does it matter if it was them? We’re just declaring a personal battle during the war.” Baekhyun’s smile matched Jongdae’s perfectly.

Chanyeol glanced at Kris, as if trying to read his thoughts on the proposition. The dragon just shrugged and gestured to his ruined shirt. “Why not?”

The phoenix laughed. “What happened to remaining neutral?”

“I am. I’m just supplying an ally with assistance is all.”

“Excellent,” Jongdae was rubbing his hands together rather wickedly, his fingers stained purple. “We’ll meet in the cover of darkness. Most of the South dorms will be asleep then. Today will be for preparing.”

“I have a few ideas,” Baekhyun chimed in, glancing around the room to meet all of their eyes. He counted off his fingers as he listed his pranks, “mess with their smoke alarms, meaning we mess with the whole dorm. Or we can focus on specifically Suho and Seok and sneak into their dorm room to either draw on their faces while they sleep or carry their mattresses out to the lake so they wake up stranded.”  

Please do not forget to vote in the poll below! Which prank should the group of them pursue? 

Until next time~